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Time to acknowledge science’s debt to Islam?

By Jo Marchant

WHEN Roman civilisation fell in the early centuries AD, the light of scholarship was extinguished. It was close to a thousand years before civilisation recovered, thanks to European scholars who rediscovered classical Greek learning and ushered in the new dawn of the Renaissance.

At least, this is how history is taught. Now two books argue that this view ignores the crucial role of Islamic scholars.

In the first part of Science and Islam, a fascinating and clearly written book, Ehsan Masood tells how Islam spread rapidly from the 7th century onward, from the west of China …